This invention relates to novel uses of a material known as “coal combustion residuals” (“CCR”). CCR, otherwise referred to as “coal ash”, are finely comminuted particles of material that remain after coal has been burned to provide the immense quantities of heat required to operate high-pressure steam boilers in coal-fired electric power plants operated by electric power utilities such as the Tennessee Valley Authority, Duke Energy and others. CCR accumulates in vast quantities, and storing the material requires expense and creates environmental risk. In recent years, regulatory authorities have taken an increasingly negative view of the manner in which CCR's are stored and enacted regulations that will require that CCR's be handled in a manner different from past practice.
CCR's include fly ash, bottom ash, boiler slag, flue gas desulfurized gypsum (FGD Gypsum) and other coal combustion byproducts.
The management of CCR is regulated at both the federal and the state level. The Federal CCR Rule, 80 Fed. Reg. §21302 (Apr. 17, 2015) and the Direct Final Rule (Oct. 4, 2016) regulate coal ash as a solid waste and not as a hazardous waste. They set minimum standards for disposal and/or disposition of coal ash. Other additional state and federal regulations continue to apply to coal ash disposal. The Federal CCR Rule includes detailed standards for the design and location of coal ash landfills and impoundments, groundwater monitoring, remediation, structural integrity and final closure of landfills and impoundments.
The Federal CCR Rule does not regulate practices that meet the definition of a “beneficial” use of CCR, which must meet all of the following conditions, as found in 80 Fed. Reg. at §21349:                (1) the CCR must provide a functional benefit;        (2) the CCR must substitute for the use of a virgin material, conserving natural resources that would otherwise need to be obtained through practices such as extraction;        (3) the use of CCR must meet relevant product specifications, regulatory standards or design standards when available and when such standards are not available, CCR are not used in excess quantities; and        (4) when un-encapsulated use of CCR involves placement on the land of 12,400 tons or more in non-roadway applications, the user must demonstrate and keep records and provide such documentation upon request, that environmental releases to groundwater, surface water, soil and air are comparable to or lower than those from analogous products made without CCR, or that environmental releases to groundwater, surface water, soil and air will be at or below relevant regulatory and health-based benchmarks for human and ecological receptors during use.EPA's final CCR management rule (https://www.regulations.gov/doucment?D=EPA-HO-RCRA-2009-0640-11970), and EPA's direct final CCR management rule https://www.ea.gov/coalash/coal-ash-rule. Worldwide web links are provided for easy reference.        
Any use that fails to comply with all of the criteria above will be considered “disposal” of CCR and is subject to all disposal requirements in the Federal CCR Rule.
Department of Defense (“DoD”) bases located in the United States of America are exempt from local zoning and local ordinances. Any CCR used in a beneficial use application on a military base located in the United States of America will therefore meet all the federal standards for CCR, but will avoid the necessity of complying with potentially overlapping or inconsistent standards applied by various state and local entities. Due to the recently enacted Final Rule and Direct Final Rule issued by the EPA, there are hundreds of millions of tons of CCR which could be beneficially used. Accordingly, there is a need for an appropriate use of CCR that provides the advantages of a “beneficial use” while at the same time reducing the amount of CCR material that would otherwise require disposal.
In moving large quantities of bulk material, the transportation method and cost component is always an important consideration. This invention allows the beneficial use of CCR in locations that have a less expensive transportation cost than many of the disposal options. This transportation savings is created in that there are DoD bases and other civilian uses that are in close proximity of the existing CCR storage locations and which can benefit from an invention as described in this application. For example, there are more than 200 DoD bases and over 1000 coal ash storage locations in the United States. Many of these locations are in close proximity to each other, thereby reducing the transportation cost compared to disposal options and making it economically feasible to construct static structures of various types that incorporate CCRs into the structure in numerous ways.
Another advantage of this invention is that the majority of regulated landfill disposal options have daily and yearly incoming caps on how many tons of material can be received. With the recently-enacted EPA regulations regarding CCR, in most areas there is not enough available capacity at landfills to handle the volumes of CCR that require disposal in regulated landfills nearby.